Saturday 27 May

Sainte Mere Eglise

International March for Peace

Get your hiking shoes on because this is for a good cause information found at the Sainte Mere Eglise tourist office.

D-Day in Normandy how to prepare your stay.

To help you organise your break in the Bay of Cotentin, the Tourist Offices of Sainte-Mère-Eglise and Carentan offer suggestions for week end and longer breaks, leisure activities and visits.  There are many different landscapes to be discovered between the landing beaches, the Regional Nature Park of Cotentin and Bessin, the Baie des Veys and the harbour of Carentan: the coastline, the beaches, the bocage countryside, peat bogs, nature reserves, chateaux, manor houses and many sites dedicated to the history of the D-Day landings. Book your accommodation online on www.ot-baie-du-cotentin.com, and find out what there is to do and see, where to eat and go out in Sainte-Mère-Eglise and Carentan.

Did you know?

D-Day required unprecedented cooperation between international armed forces. The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) was an international coalition although the Allies were united against Germany, the military leadership responsible for ‘Overlord’ had to overcome political, cultural and personal tensions.
By 1944, over 2 million troops from over 12 countries were in Great-Britain in preparation for the invasion.
On D-Day, Allied forces consisted mainly of American, British and Canadian troops but also included Australian, Belgian, Czech, Dutch, French, Greek, New Zealand, Norwegian, Rhodesian and Polish naval, air and/or ground support.

2/3 of the world’s nations are working & fighting alongside the United Nations for victory !

On Saturday June 25th I was with my guests visiting the German Cemetery in La Cambe
when we had the honor of meeting a WW2 British veteran.

Franck Noone is his name, he is 94 years old.
He landed on Sword Beach (in the British sector)
, he started in North Africa,
he was a sargeant and fought all through the Battle of Normandy
returned home in Januarary of 1946.
He told me when he got off his landing craft
he was in chest high water and it was pretty cold area to be in.

He came ashore with the Hampshire Regiment
then later assigned to the Commandos
and took out a gun battery near Colleville (Montgomery).

I was very happy to meet him and speak with him. Thank you Franck for your service.

HARRY DEAN PARK
(1924 – 1944)

On October 27th 2016, I was with the Dechow family,
we did a detour from the normal D-Day sites
to include a visit to the small village of Perigny in Normandy
where a monument dedicated to the crew
of the downed B-17 bomber August 8th 1944.
Their uncle (& great uncle) Harry
was just 20 years old when he lost his life.

The crew went MIA (Missing in Action) on the mission to Saint-Sylvain (Calvados) 8 August 1944.
Their bomber was one of many to partake in Operation Totalize.
Pilot : John P. Keys
Co-pilot : Elvin W. Samuelson
Navigator : Patrick H. Lollis
Bombardier : Elton Dickens
Flight engineer/top turret gunner : Harry D. Park
Radio Operator : Frank O. Thomas
Ball turret gunner : Peter P. Martin
Tail gunner : Donald V. Rieger (8 Killed in Action)
Waist gunner : Gilbert A. Borba (Prisoner of War).

 1½ minute before bombs away, at an altitude of about 11,000 feet,
a Flak burst put out engine 2, and another one cut off the tail assembly.
The plane nosed down out of formation and exploded near the ground.
Pieces of it were strewn over many places near Périgny, NE of Vire, France.

Normandy, D-Day and the landings

In the Bay of Cotentin, the history of the Battle of Normandy
unfolds at Sainte-Mère-Eglise,
first town liberated by the Allies,
the battle of Carentan and the airdrops.
Come and visit the sites and museums dedicated to D-Day,
and Utah Beach
the first American landing sector in Normandy.

Information about those events can be found here :
http://www.ot-baieducotentin.fr/en/

Did you know?

A few days after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941,
Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hilter, believing that the United States could not get back up from such a devasting attack,
decided to declare war on the USA…

To give you an idea of American production rate, B-24 bombers were being produced every 63 minutes at its peak (March 1944), a rate so large that production exceeded the military’s ability to use the aircraft. Such were the production numbers it’s been said that more aluminium, aircrew and effort went into the B-24 than any other aircraft in history !!!

B24’s on an assembly line

B24’s on a runway getting ready for D-Day

Did you know ?

That as part of the Overlord D-Day plan….

In Operations ‘Taxable’ and ‘Glimmer’, the RAF dropped metal strips – codenamed ‘Window’  along the French coast to confuse German radar.
On the night of 5-6 June, as part of Operation ‘Titanic’, the RAF dropped dummy parachutists to simulate an airborne invasion and draw German forces away from key objectives.

Metallised strips of paper known as ‘Window’ caused confusion on German radars.

At the end of May this year, I had the honor of taking relatives of Lt.Morton Eustis for a 3 day tour of the D-Day sites.
We visited his grave  at the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.
Then on May 26th we were in Domfront for a special ceremony honoring him.
Morton was killed when his Sherman entered Domfront of August 13th 1944 (by a German sniper).
72 years have gone by but the villagers of Domfront haven’t forgotten his sacrifice and so many other Americans to liberate Normandy then France and end the war in Europe…

Did you know?

 That Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was put in charge of German defences in Normandy and he believed that any invasion would come at high tide, when troops would be at risk from German fire for the shortest period of time. He devised a series of beach obstacles for underwater defences that could be completely hidden during mid and high tides. The jagged edges of iron Czech “hedgehogs” could tear through the bottom of the landing craft. Some were rigged with explosives that would detonate on impact. Round, flat land mines (also called ‘teller mines’ after the German word for ‘plate’) were attached to wooden posts wedged into the sand and would explode when they came into contact with the landing craft.

Inland, Rommel also designed a network of large poles (made from trees the slave labor had trimmed off the branches) fixed vertically into the ground that prevented gliders from landing in open areas or for paratroopers to drop into.

These defences were nicknamed ‘Rommel’s Asparagus’.